The Austrian government - who have heretofore plied Heta with €5.5 billion - held an emergency meeting to discuss the development. They concluded that they would not hand over "a single euro" to the...

European Union

The goal is always the same: if they can't have the run of the place, they make sure that nobody else can either, by setting up a conflict scenario that nobody there can ever hope to resolve. And so if you see Anglo-imperialists going out of their way and spending lots of money to poison the political well somewhere in the world, you can be sure that they are on their way out. Simply put, they don't spend lots of money to set up intractable problems for themselves to solve - it's always done for the benefit of others.

However desirable it may be to protect the Earth from the dire consequences of a runaway climate the chances that the world will agree to cut its emissions quickly enough to stay below the 2C threshold are somewhere between zip, zilch and zero. (There’s also the question of whether cuts of the magnitude necessary would be politically, economically and technologically achievable if the world does agree, but we’ll leave it aside here.) Now imagine that you are one of the prominent politicians – Obama, Kerry, Merkel, Ban Ki-moon, Hollande, Cameron, Davey, whoever – who have publicly and repeatedly stated that climate change is the greatest threat facing the world, that the world is in serious trouble if nothing is done to stop it but that a solution is still within our reach. What do you tell people when next year’s make-or-break Paris climate talks show that it isn’t?

With Greek CDS surging to near post-bailout highs (and short-end bond yields back above 11%), it appears the market is anxious of the endgame as tomorrow's 3rd and final 'snap-election'-saving vote looms. Following Samaras fearmongering yesterday, it appears Germany is starting to fear the worst (and play down its effect), as Merkel's bloc states "the prospect of a Greek sovereign default is no longer a concern for euro member countries and financial markets," adding "hope that Greece’s international partners would pay if the country’s policymakers refuse to carry out necessary reforms is misplaced." However, as Bruno de Landevoisin notes, "what is at stake is none other than the prosperity of the common man pitted against the privilege of concentrated power."

Two weeks ago, as the S&P was preparing to surge on the latest round of all time high market-goosing algo trickery by the FOMC, 60 prominent German personalities from the realms of politics, economics, culture and the media were less concerned with blinking red and green stock quotes and were focused on something far more serious to the future of the world: the threat of war with Russia. In a letter published by Die Zeit, numerous famous and respected Germans including a former president and former prime minister write "Wieder Krieg in Europa? Nicht in unserem Namen!", or, roughly translated, "War in Europe Again? Not in Our Names!" As the signatories note: "It is not about Putin. Heads of state come and go. What is at stake is Europe."

At present, the choice between the two available models on the planet seems stark indeed: Eurasian integration or a spreading empire of chaos. China and Russia know what they want, and so, it seems, does Washington. The question is: What will the other moving parts of Eurasia choose to do? All these interlocked developments suggest a geopolitical tectonic shift in Eurasia that the American media simply hasn’t begun to grasp. Which doesn’t mean that no one notices anything. You can smell the incipient panic in the air in the Washington establishment. So long to the unipolar moment...2015 is "going to be a real hardcore year."

Russia’s years of neglecting to invest and reform pointed to an inevitable crisis. In 2014, that crisis came on two fronts, first in the confrontation over Ukraine from early this year and the resulting sanctions, and then followed by the incredible collapse in oil prices over the last few months. Russia and its citizens have been here before and know the drill. Everything looks terrible at the moment, but as the old saying goes, times of crisis are also times of maximum opportunity to chart a new course. So the positive spin from all of this is that we could see a new start from Russia in 2015. Writing off Russia would be unwise.

Following the start of Abenomics in 2012, Japan moved back to the center of attention of global financial markets. After two and a half decades of economic stagnation, hopes were high that Japan would escape its long stagnation and deflation. Plenty of economists around the globe hoped that, in so doing, Japan would show the western world, mainly the Eurozone, the way to do the same and avoid a similar long period of low growth and stagnating incomes. Conversely, the failure of Abe’s plan for Japan’s recovery would not only be a disaster for the country of the rising sun. It would also be very bad news for central bankers and politicians in the west as well. It would prove that Keynesian policies don’t work in a world of too much debt and shrinking populations.

Despite the authorities' best efforts to keep everything orderly, we know how this global Game of Geopolitical Tetris ends: "Players lose a typical game of Tetris when they can no longer keep up with the increasing speed, and the Tetriminos stack up to the top of the playing field. This is commonly referred to as topping out."

Having started at noon Moscow time (4am Eastern), Putin's annual Q&A run for a massive three and a half hours, during which the Russian leader took numerous questions from the public and as expected, reiterated the key "rally around the flag" talking points that have permeated Russian rhetoric over the past few weeks as the economic situation in Russia deteriorated. As Bloomberg notes, the conference was attended by hundreds of reporters and carried live on television around the world, the event took on heightened importance this year as the president sought to reassure a Russian public unnerved by the ruble’s plummet. While he did acknowledge the difficult economic reality, Putin sought to reassure his countrymen that the current weakness "would last no longer than two years." Putin promptly pivoted against the west and accused the U.S. and European Union of trying to undermine his country and blaming external factors for the sharp plunge in the ruble, notably the drop in oil saying that “the economy will naturally adapt to the new conditions of low oil prices.”